A Provençal Road Trip... in South Africa

As I sipped my glass of crisp Chenin Blanc on the terrace of a local winery and looked out over rows of vines, blue lavender and olive trees to the low, rocky mountains beyond, I found myself thinking:

“This is Africa?”

Where were the lions, the elephants, the giraffes? Where were the Masai tribes and the head dresses? I should be eating mashed lentils with my hands in the bush somewhere, not eating fresh oysters and Camembert cheese on a sunny terrace. This wasn’t the Africa from the pages of my dad’s National Geographic magazines. Hell, if it wasn’t for the language, I’d think we were in Provence!

But, you know, maybe it was a blessing in disguise that the area we explored in South Africa, the wine and coastal regions east of Cape Town, so closely resembled the region of France that we would be returning to within days. Maybe it eased the transition between traveling and being back in Provence. Maybe that two week road trip helped us to mentally prepare ourselves for Europe.

It certainly helped us prepare our stomachs.

Two weeks in South Africa’s most fertile region, not to mention a visit to its famed Winelands, was enough to help us gain back all of the weight we had lost during our trek in Nepal. We gorged ourselves on lovely French-style cheeses, home-made ostrich stew, fresh Knynsa oysters, barbequed sausages, our first sushi meal in a year.

And wine. Obscene, embarrassing, disgusting amounts of wine. 

Although it felt like it sometimes, we didn’t spend the whole two weeks just eating and drinking. We drove a bit, first along gorgeous winding coastal roads with stunning views on the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, then through dry, rocky mountains further inland, and finally, through lush green farmland covered in grape vines and blooming lavender. We didn’t have to drive far out of Cape Town for landscapes that were at once varied and beautiful. 

 

We also did several day-hikes, during which I insisted that we both carry “baboon sticks” in case we came across any baboons during our walk.  You laugh, but those things were everywhere and I wasn’t about to risk getting attacked by an aggressive, disease-infested, red-bottomed baboon during the last week of our trip. No, thank you, no nasty-ass baboons for this girl.

Those baboons better not f- with me, I got my Baboon Stick.

A baboon-free hike along the coast

Baboons weren’t the only wildlife we saw during our road trip; we also got up close and personal with a colony of penguins and some ostriches. True, it isn’t exactly Discovery Channel material, but we were still pretty excited. That is, until one of our guesthouse hosts told us that ostriches are really mean and will use their claws to rip open your stomach and eat your intestines while you are still alive. Charming lady, really…

At least he won't try to eat my innards

 

When we had had enough nature in all of its threatening, organ-eating forms, we hightailed it back to Cape Town, with a two-day detour in the wine region to do tastings and essentially make our bodies hate us. Imagine my liver giving me the finger before packing up its things and jumping in a taxi- that’s what two consecutive days of wine “tasting” did to us.

In Cape Town, we did what we always do in a new city: we got lost. We wondered around aimlessly until we eventually found ourselves in the adorable neighborhood of Bo Kaap, known for its candy-colored houses. Every home was painted a different bright color, every street looked like Disneyland, everywhere we looked was another photo opportunity. It was fuckin’ adorable.

On our last night in Cape Town, the last of our year-long adventure, we went to an Ethiopian restaurant in the hope of finally feeling like we were in Africa, even if just for one meal. Everything was going well: we had Ethiopian honey wine to drink and we ate with our hands. There were even mashed lentils on the table. After two weeks in “Provence,” we were finally in Africa. We finished our typical Ethiopian meal and were about to congratulate ourselves on this authentic experience when our waiter came to our table.

“And now, for dessert,” he said with a flourish, as we eagerly strained to see what Ethiopian sweet would finish the meal. “Mediterranean baklava with ice cream. Enjoy.”

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The Great Kiwi Road Trip: Part II, Episode II*

*And a little bit of Episode I because I was way too busy singing old Elton John songs and pretending to use my magic staff (didn’t I tell you? I’m Gandalf now…) that I did not even mention where we were in New Zealand’s South Island. What kind of travel blog is this??

So before I jump into our most recent adventures let me back up and tell you what we were doing last week when we weren’t watching Lord of the Rings movies.

We flew from Auckland in the North Island to Christchurch in the South Island, where we rented Chunk, our camper van. 

Chunk's roomy interior

We then drove southwest through the central lakes region and by Mt. Cook, which at 12,300 ft (3754 m), is New Zealand’s highest mountain. From there, we headed further south to the area around Queenstown, which is on the massive Lake Wakatipu and is surrounded by several beautiful mountain ranges; one of which is the awesomely-named Remarkables range.

I don’t know why that name tickles me so much, but I just love the idea of naming a mountain range such an awe-struck adjective. They aren’t named for their rockiness, or their smokiness, or after some person or tribe. They are named The Remarkables simply because someone looked at them and that’s the first word that came to their mind. I love that.

From Queenstown, we went to the southern-most region of New Zealand, imaginatively named Southland. Remember our first road trip in the north? That area was called Northland. I guess the Kiwis’ creativity stopped after The Remarkables.

Southland is well-known for its pristine mountains and fjords (the fjord area is called, you guessed it, Fjordland), including Milford Sound, which is New Zealand’s pride and joy: a long inlet of deep blue water from the Tasman Sea that winds through a gorge of snowcapped mountains, green domed hills and tall, cascading waterfalls that crash into the water below from sheer rock faces. 

Taste the Rainbow (and enjoy the dorky raincoat hood)

While actually a fjord, not a sound, Milford Sound is not only beautiful, but is also impressively remote and protected. For the nation’s most frequented tourist site, there is very little there in the way of tourist amenities and the Sound is left blessedly free of the kinds of crowds one would expect at so famous a place.

In fact, the entire South Island is conspicuously free of the hordes of tourists that should be in a country this stunning. As I’ve said again and again, New Zealand is gorgeous. No exaggeration (or at least, no more than usual, coming from me), every single hour of every single day that we’ve spent here on the South Island has brought us one stunning view after another. While I can’t say that New Zealand is the most beautiful country in the world, I can assert without a doubt that it is the most beautiful one I have ever seen.  

A large part of that is of course the natural beauty of the landscape, but another part is that this placed is simply untouched. There are so few people living on the South Island that the vast majority -and I’m talking maybe 80% here- of the island is undeveloped. Sure, a good chunk of that percentage is grazing land for animals (there are 45 million sheep for a population of 4.5 million people), but it’s still green and natural and has not been constructed upon. The rest is just virgin forest, uninhabited mountain ranges, naked coast line. We pass the most picturesque alpine lakes imaginable and no one has built a house on the banks, no one is cutting across them on a jet-ski. Sure, we see lakes like these in Switzerland, but there they are surrounded by mansions and piers, villages and public parks. Here, it feels like we have the entire country to ourselves.

Can you tell I am in love with this place?

After taking in Milford Sound by way of a boat cruise (which was kind of forced upon us: there is no other way to explore the fjord other than on the water) we enjoyed Fjordland a little more by hiking along the famous (well, famous here anyway) Routeburn Track up to Key Summit. I normally don’t bother giving the names of the hikes we do, but this one had such spectacular views from the top that I can’t keep it to myself. Behold:

Beautiful, yes, but coooold!

Also of note is the wildlife we have seen these last few days. While walking in the woods one day in a place we named the Enchanted Forest (shut up, it was enchanted!) we saw a wild parakeet in a bush right next to the path! Our pictures of him are embarrassing, but it was really cool to see a bird that we normally consider to be tropical in a place surrounded by snowy mountain peaks. 

See? Totally enchanted.

But that’s New Zealand: every climate, landscape, flora and fauna imaginable, all smashed together on a tiny island. Sheep on the side of the road one minute, seals the next. It’s insane.

Our other brush with Mother Nature was decidedly less magical: a creepy possum wouldn’t leave us alone one night. We could hear him scratching around outside and stomping back and forth on our roof. I kept telling Vincent, “It’s a possum, it’s a possum, I just know it,” while looking out the window from behind the curtains like a crazy old lady making sure the neighborhood kids don’t ride their bikes on her lawn.

Vincent remained skeptical until finally he decided to grab a flashlight and go look around. We both crept outside into the night, Vincent in front with the flashlight and me cowering behind him (which is perfectly normal- possums are gross). Suddenly, Vincent gasped, “Elissa, look!”

On the ground, in the beam of his flashlight, was a dead bird.

That was proof enough for me that there was a killer possum on the loose, and doing my most dignified version of the Chicken Dance, I ran back to the camper van yelling, “Possumpossumpossum!”

Vincent finally convinced me to venture back out in the darkness and we found the possum, high on a branch in the tree above Chunk.

Watching us.

Waiting.

Creepy-ass possum…

We are now on the west coast, where we will begin our journey north along the Tasman Sea for the next week before looping around back to Christchurch. In the meantime, betcha can’t guess the name of the westernmost region of New Zealand…

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On the Road Again

After a month of cozy hospitality (and good ol' hard work) in El Bolson, Vincent and I are back to backpacking.

In the hope of helping ease our re-acclimation to life on the road, we decided to head straight to Argentina's biggest wine region, Mendoza, to try to drown our sorrows of leaving Rosie with bottle after bottle of Malbec. Perfectly acceptable behavior for two adults, right?

Mendoza is a large city surrounded by smaller wine-growing communities, best known for its Malbec, which, if you have never tried it before, is a really drinkable red wine. Too drinkable, actually.

Mendoza itself didn't particularly captivate us, but the stay was worthwhile because we were able to explore the wine region during a day-long biking wine tour. If that sounds dangerous, it's because it is. Four wineries, three or four wines to taste (read: drink) at each, over the span of eight hours and 20 kilometers in the hot sun. It was so much fun.

Biking was really the way to do it, both for the views of the vines and the Andes beyond, and for the rush of adrenaline we got every time a massive truck nearly pushed us off the road. But the upside of multiple near-death experiences during a wine tour is that we were both too tipsy to really notice the danger we were in, and the day passed with nothing more unpleasant than a headache towards the end of the afternoon. We tasted some delicious wines and bought a bottle to take with us at each stop.

It was a blast.

Only the second winery and we're already having trouble holding it together...

Kidding ourselves into thinking we could eliminate all of the wine we drank over our three days in Mendoza, we decided to head up into the Andes near the Chilean border to do some hiking. We chose the village of Uspallata, on the Ruta de los Andes, since it was on the way to Santiago, our next destination. In high season, Uspallata might be considered a sleepy mountain village, but when we were there, it was positively comatose. We rented a cabin on a campsite just out of town (meaning, away from the town's one intersection) and had the entire campgrounds to ourselves. The main reason, though, that we chose Uspallata was that it was a good jumping off point for hiking around the Aconcagua mountain, which at 22,800 ft (6960 m) is the American continent's highest peak and the tallest mountain outside the Himalayas.

To explore this monster, we took a bus further into the Andes to an even smaller village called Puente del Inca, a veritable shit hole if I've ever seen one. The guidebook tricked us into thinking there was something worth doing in the town itself besides hiking as far away from it as humanly possible. There is a "sight" so to say: a natural bridge over a gorge, its stone surface yellowed by sulfuric gases from hot springs below it. That sounds kinda cool, right?

Well, it isn't.

In reality, it's a jaundiced rock arch that competes for view with a decrepit shell of a concrete building where hot spring baths used to be. While walking on a trail by the gorge, we saw a dead horse, which was infinitely more interesting.

Making the site even more underwhelming was its location behind stand after stand of the cheesiest tourist crap I think I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot of tourist crap. There were at least ten stands, all selling the exact same assortment of sculpted figurines made of the yellow stone- everything from The Virgin to a life-size replica of a leather boot. Who, please, tell me, who would buy a full size boot made of yellowed rock? And what would they do with it if they did???

I was baffled by it. Still am.

All of this is to explain why we spent no time in the village itself and instead high-tailed it out of town to the Aconcagua park trail head, which is in a stunning location in a valley between the snow-capped, craggy peak of the Aconcagua mountain (and a few of its lesser peers) and a line of lower sandy mountains seemingly painted with swirling hues of pink, beige, red, violet, gold, green and blue. While we were supposed to be hiking towards the Aconcagua, I couldn't help but spend most of the time looking back over my shoulder at the vivid display of color behind us.

We spent two nights in Uspallata before saying goodbye to Argentina and crossing the border into Chile (where Vincent got pulled out of the Customs line and interrogated because his bag contained popcorn, which is apparently considered to be a dangerous foreign foodstuff in Chile. While he was explaining his ignorance to one official, another one took out the little guitar Vincent bought in Bolivia and proceeded to play it. So bizarre).

We had spent nearly two months in Argentina and leaving it really solidified the realization that our time in South America is coming to a close. Just one more week in Chile and one week on Easter Island, and then we take a plane across the Pacific to New Zealand and another continent altogether. We have already done almost one third of our trip!

Time is going by way too fast.

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